Ramblings from the creator of HomeSite, TopStyle, FeedDemon and Glassboard Android.

Saturday, May 28, 2005

Just wanted to publicly thank Henrick Hellström of StreamSec for the excellent support he's provided me over the past few days. I had an urgent need for digital signature verification but had no prior experience with the topic, and Henrick was extremely helpful in getting me up to speed and getting my code in working order.

Given my experience with them, I can strongly recommend StreamSec to any Delphi developer who needs an encryption toolkit.

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Looks like the screenshot of the "Surfer" newspaper style linked in my previous post has received some nice comments, so I thought I'd talk about how it came to be.

Dave Winer recommends that RSS aggregators adopt a River of News approach to displaying information, and I have to admit that it is a nice - and fast - way to scan items from many feeds. In fact, it's similar to how I use FeedDemon.

As I've written before, by default FeedDemon acts much like an email client simply because that's how most people are used to receiving information, but this isn't how I use FeedDemon at all. Instead, I scan the headlines of an entire channel group of feeds. When I see something that looks interesting, I'll read the first sentence or two of the article, and if it continues to hold my interest, I'll either read the entire article or copy it to a news bin so I can read it later.

I think more people would use FeedDemon this way if I made it simpler to do so. Right now, those starting out with FeedDemon often don't realize that they can radically alter the way information is displayed by choosing a different newspaper style, so I decided to create a new default newspaper style for the upcoming FeedDemon 1.51 that contains a number of different display options.

As the screenshot shows, the new "Surfer" style will enable you to change how items are sorted and grouped, and you'll be able to toggle between full, short and no descriptions. You'll also be able to collapse groups, and even launch links in a separate tab within FeedDemon. Plus, you can choose to copy an item to a news bin directly from the newspaper, which is great for link-mavens like myself.

My preference is to show short descriptions, which are generated by FeedDemon itself - basically, a short description is the first sentence or two of an item's description with all HTML tags except hyperlinks removed. This makes it easy for me to get an idea of what each article is about without having to see the entire description. Although others have recommended doing away with any grouping of items, I personally like grouping items by channel (feed). I want to know the feed an item belongs to because it sets the context for how I'll interpret it (for example, if a headline is from Boing Boing, I'll think about it differently than if it's from The New York Times).

Getting this all to work required enabling newspapers to "communicate" with FeedDemon itself, so I'm afraid it can't be used with existing versions of FeedDemon. However, we're planning to have an alpha release of FeedDemon 1.51 before too long, so I believe the tease is only a short one:)

This week I've been in what my wife calls "mad scientist mode," coding away into the wee hours of the morning. It's weird how this works: some weeks I can barely write any code, whereas other weeks I can't type fast enough (tip: loud music keeps the fingers flying).

While I love writing software, I hate how hard it is turning my brain off at the end of a solid day of coding. Somewhere deep in the cobwebbed nooks and crannies of my skull, I think there's an army of tiny little geeks thinking about what new code I should be writing, and unlike me, these guys don't seem to need any sleep. If I wake up in the middle of the night for any reason, these little dudes spring into life and insist that I get back to my keyboard.

Last night is a good (bad?) example - I woke up just after 1AM (ouch!), and try as I might, I couldn't ignore the call of the keyboard. So, I've been awake ever since, writing code like a caffeine-addicted wiener dog. A good chunk of this time was spent ripping out TopStyle's existing HTTP routines and replacing them with the ones I use in FeedDemon, which handle proxies, firewalls and NTLM authentication better. I also continued working on FeedDemon 1.51, completing a couple of new features (screenshot 1, screenshot 2, screenshot 3).

Of course, now I'm pooped, and even the little coders in my head are starting to get blurry-eyed. If any of my new co-workers are reading this and need to contact me today, better do it this morning - I imagine I'll be asleep at the wheel by this afternoon :)

Gnomedex is at the top of my list of favorite conferences, not just because of the people attending, but because I always learn something new there. For example, last year's Gnomedex is where I learned about podcasting, which resulted in me adding podcast downloading and synching to FeedDemon.

Friday, May 20, 2005

As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm a firm believer in using blogs and RSS for distributed conversation. So, I'd like to start a conversation about the threat that spam and spyware pose to our little syndicated world. I brought this topic up with several companies who were at the Syndicate Conference, and I was disturbed to discover how few of them are even thinking about this pending problem.

Most of them replied, "Spam problem? But there isn't one - if someone's feed contains spam, everyone will just unsubscribe!" Well, yeah - but only if we subscribe to individual feeds, which I believe will take a backseat to aggregated feeds. I'll use my own experience with the NewsGator acquisition as an example: hundreds of blogs contained news of the acquisition, but I was subscribed to very few of their feeds. Instead, I subscribed to dynamic search feeds - that is, keyword-based feeds powered by RSS search engines - which enabled me to listen in on the conversation. Very powerful indeed - but unfortunately, very spammable.

There are already fakespamblogs, many of which have RSS feeds. Most of the ones I've seen were created to influence search engine rankings, but it's only a matter of time before they use their feeds for delivering spam (I'll wager that some of them already do). These fake blogs are easy to set up, so as soon as one is taken down, it will re-appear somewhere else (much like their spyware-filled brethren, the warez sites), making it tricky to simply filter them out by their subdomain name. My guess is that the main reason we don't see more RSS spam is simply because spammers are waiting for it to be profitable. Now that conferences such as Syndicate are attended not just by geeks and developers but also by investors, they've got to be thinking that the time is almost here. Create a bunch of fake blogs littered with popular keywords, and let their feeds be picked up by the RSS search engines (to their credit, some of the RSS search engine companies I talked with are already tackling this problem).

Even if I'm way off base about how spam will come to RSS, we all know that spammers will find a way to jump on the RSS bandwagon. Given past history, every new social technology needs to think about spam right from the start, or else risk being crippled by it (side note: many implementations of tagging also strike me as being spammable).

Related to this is the fact that RSS enclosures (a.k.a. "podcasts") must look attractive to spyware creators. Before I added podcast features to FeedDemon, I took a look at how a few of the existing tools were handling them. To my surprise, security didn't seem to be a big concern - they'd even download EXE enclosures, perhaps assuming that the user's anti-virus software would stop them from being executed if they were malware. Couple automatic enclosure downloading with dynamic search feeds which contain enclosures, and you've got a great spyware delivery system. This is why I made sure that FeedDemon used a safe list for downloading enclosures.

If you make a living from RSS, I hope you'll join in this conversation - either here or in your own blog - and let everyone know whether you're thinking about this problem (or, just let me know I'm full of it if you disagree that it's a threat).

Watching news of my acquisition by NewsGator travel around the blogosphere was an amazing experience for me. I've seen other stories spread like wildfire before, but this was the first time I've seen it happen with news that involved me directly. I tried to add a "thank you" comment to every blog that posted about the acquisition, but after a few hours it had spread to hundreds of sites, and I just wasn't able to add the personal touch to so many places. So, for all of you who blogged the news and had such nice things to say about me and my software, thank you. It's incredibly rewarding to see such goodwill directed my way, and it's especially gratifying to see that I've earned the trust of so many people (on the internet, you're nothing without trust).

There were, of course, a number of flames about the acquisition, some of them very personal, but that's to be expected. More importantly, there have been a number of comments from those concerned about the deal, and I'll do my best to address these here over the next few weeks. But please bear with me if I don't address your concerns right away - we're still working out many of the details, and I don't think it's wise for me to talk about things that haven't been settled yet.

In the meantime, I hope those of you with an opinion about the acquisition will keep blogging about it. I'm listening to the conversation, and so are my co-workers at NewsGator. We want to make sure we build what you want, and to do that, we need to hear about it! This to me is the coolest thing about syndication: the fact that everyone (even your competitors) can learn by listening to - and joining in - the conversation.

Unfortunately, that also makes RSS an attractive target for spammers, and based on discussions I had at Syndicate, it seems that very few people are even thinking about the threat of spammers yet, let alone doing anything about it. But that will be the subject of my next post...

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

As regular visitors to my support forums know, the biggest request - by far - that FeedDemon customers have had is the ability to synchronize their subscriptions between multiple computers. They use FeedDemon on one PC at home, on another at the office, on a laptop while traveling, etc., and they want their feeds to be synched between them.

If someone reads an item on one computer, it shouldn't show up as unread on another computer. And when they subscribe to a feed, it should automatically appear on any computer they use. Basically, provide the convenience of a web-based aggregator with the power and speed of a Windows desktop application.

I toyed with various hack-ish ways to do this, and even considered creating my own web-based sync service, but in the end came to the conclusion that to really do this right, I needed to join forces with someone who already had the server-side piece in place.

I used to think that, too. But shortly after I decided I needed to join forces with someone, I read this post in NewsGator founder Greg Reinacker's blog, in which he laid out NewsGator's plans. This post really opened my eyes to where they were headed - let's just say, I was impressed.

Funny enough, soon afterwards I got an email from Greg asking whether I'd consider joining forces with NewsGator. Truth is, if I hadn't already read Greg's blog post and been so impressed with the direction NewsGator was headed, chances are I would've turned him down - but because I read that post, I flew out to meet with the folks at NewsGator (score one for transparency through blogging!).

Long story short: we agreed that I should come on board and bring FeedDemon and TopStyle with me.

So what does this mean for FeedDemon customers?

I think you're going to like this :)

NewsGator uses a subscription model, and FeedDemon will become part of their subscription plans. All existing FeedDemon customers will get a two-year business standard subscription for free - and this includes upgrades to FeedDemon. In other words, if you've already bought FeedDemon, you'll get brand new versions of FeedDemon and a subscription to NewsGator Online free for the next two years.

Are there going to be changes in FeedDemon as a result of this?

Certainly. The most obvious will be that FeedDemon will integrate very closely with NewsGator's online synchronization platform, enabling using FeedDemon on multiple computers while maintaining state between all of them. You could even use FeedDemon on your home computer, NewsGator Outlook Edition while at work, and NewsGator Mobile Edition while traveling, and still have everything synched between devices.

Beyond that, having a server-side piece offers a lot of interesting possibilities. Coupling a rich desktop client with a first-rate server-side aggregator provides the best of both worlds: you get the power of a Windows application and all the flexibility of a web-based approach. There have been a number of features I've been wanting to add to FeedDemon that required a server-side piece which I can now provide.

While these changes won't happen overnight, we've already been working hard on a new release of FeedDemon - version 1.51 - which will include much better integration than currently exists. You should expect to see the first beta of FeedDemon 1.51 a couple of weeks from now.

And what about TopStyle customers?

While the acquisition obviously came to pass because of FeedDemon, NewsGator has made it clear that they're committed to TopStyle as well. This was an important part of the deal for me. I use TopStyle every single day, and I personally couldn't work without it. I'm already developing TopStyle 3.12, a free upgrade for existing TopStyle customers which will be released as a NewsGator product.

Oh, and you'll get the same deal as FeedDemon customers: a free two-year subscription. For the record, TopStyle has a lot of users - even more than FeedDemon - so this is a very generous offer from the folks at NewsGator, and it illustrates their commitment to the product.

So, what about you, Nick? Are you moving? And will you still be doing support?

Although I'll be working for NewsGator (my official title is "Architect of Client Products"), I'll be staying here in Tennessee, with frequent trips to NewsGator's offices in Denver.

I'll continue to be active in the support forums - I need to, in order to understand what my customers need - but I'll be handing over the support reigns to the folks at NewsGator. In fact, NewsGator has already taken over some of the support for FeedDemon - they're the "reinforcements" I mentioned in this post last month. The mysterious "Ron" I talked about is actually NewsGator's Ronnie Gilbertson, who will no doubt be relieved that he's no longer a secret!

And to illustrate their commitment to FeedDemon and TopStyle, NewsGator has already hired Jack Brewster to help support both products. Jack starts next month, and he's been a very frequent contributor to my support forums over the years (sometimes I think he knows TopStyle and FeedDemon better than I do). Welcome aboard, Jack - glad you could join us!

Patience is a virtue :)

So, there are obviously some major changes underway here, and we've got a lot to do to integrate my site, support system, etc., with NewsGator's.

As long as this post is, I know it leaves a ton of questions unanswered, and I'll try to address them here over the next few weeks. In the meantime, I do ask for your patience while we get everything sorted out. The entire process will likely take several weeks, and it's possible there will be a few hiccups along the way.

The end result, though, will be something special. I'm excited to have this opportunity to take my software to a whole new level, and I look forward to entering this new chapter in my life.

Monday, May 16, 2005

I'll be at the Syndicate Conference this week, so blogging will be light. While I'm at the conference I plan to announce something new I've been working on - watch this space tomorrow morning for details.